Immigration
by EnglishFangasms
Summary: It was the turn of the century and a small family of four have been pushed out of their home in France to move to America. But it's not what it would seem and Matthew really just wants to go home. (Actually for a project in US History, but I'm putting it here too XD)


The year was 1913 after His Death, the month November, the day, the fourth. I peered out my dreary tenament window, counting the weary stains over once more, as I had often done on days such as this. It was drizzling outside and and the sky was a bruised gray and purple, as if it were the skin of a corpse. I could smell the acrid scent of the streets, a pungent mixture of manure, smoke, and people. A lot of people. Their voices filtered through the grubby glass, many languages, many conversations, all forming a roar like that of the ocean. I remembered the ocean, the sweet salty air of my home in France. Back then, my family was fair off. We weren't poor like we became in America. We weren't rich, but it was a comfortable life. But then, there was a riot in my town from the local farmers. We were pushed to escape, and that was how we came to this disgusting slum.  
"Mattieu, mon petit, please help?" I turned to face my maman. She was smiling at me with a nut cracker in her hand. Her smile always shone brightly, as if nothing had ever happened, as if she had the most wonderful life ever. I didn't understand at the time, my thirteen year old mind couldn't grasp this logic. It would be many years later, as she was on her deathbed, that I would find out her reason for that bright smile was simply the fact that she had my father, brother, and I, and somehow that was enough for her to keep joyful. I shuffled over to the table and grabbed a nutcracker similar to hers and began work. It wasn't long before the tenament door was opened and my father and my twin brother walked in. "Francois, I caught Alfred at that alley again!"  
"Oh, Arthur, just let the boy live."  
Al and I made eye contact and we both tittered a bit. Our mother and father argued almost constantly and it was quite comical. Many said it was because my father, Arthur Kirkland, was from London, England, and my maman, formerly Francois Bonnefoy, was from Paris, France. They had met on one of father's business trips and had gotten married soon after. But, because their upbringings were completely different, they're ideas on raising children were also opposing. Father was strict and wanted us to be dgnified, even if we were in the slums. Maman wanted us to be happy with our lives and enjoy ourselves, within limit of course. So the fact that Alfred would go everyday to play with some of the neighborhood children in a dirty alley was enough to put father in a rage and a smile on maman's face.  
Me, I didn't care. No one ever played with me, not here. I had no friends, besides my tedddy bear maman had made for me. So I just stayed home.

I sighed. The argument was becoming tiresome and my youthful mind just wanted to go to my room. Instead I kept at my small job of cracking the walnut shells across the table. My brother sat next to me, a big smile on his face. "Hiya, Mattie!" "Ew, Alfred you're starting to sound like those Americans outside!"  
"Aw, I am not!"  
He puffed out his cheeks and began to help with the task at hand.  
My hands feeling sore, I took a break to stare at my adjacent wall.  
It was a stained yellow, the intricate patterns on the wall a faded brown. In some places, the paper was peeling, in others black patches of mold had begun to appear. I winced a bit as a little bug, probably a cockroach or wood beetle, scurried along. This small space had banished my fear of bugs, whether I had wanted it or not. I sighed morosely and leaned on the table, feeling the cool wood against my cheek.  
"Hey, Alfred?"  
"Yeah?"  
"I don't like it here."  
He nodded in agreement, his hair covering his sky-blue eyes so that I couldn't see that he was homesick as well. He didn't want me to know, but it was inevitable. That was how it went nowadays. My brother wanted to be the strong hero, show no fear or pain, while I was the background character, knowing the truth of it all and crying in my room alone. I sighed again. Maman heard and smiled at me, flashing her sun-rays again. "Mattieu, why don't you make some sandwiches for lunch, ci vou pla'it?" "Oui, maman." I hopped from my seat and plodded to the kitchen, pulling the bread and ham from the pantry. After making the sandwiches I brought them to the table.  
"Merci."  
"Oui, maman."  
Her eyes were worried as she looked at me. "Is something wrong?"  
"I..." I began, my eyes wondering to the window again. It was so tiny, but then, the whole apartment was. I tried to breathe, my breath hitching. It wasn't because of the poverty around me, it wasn't because of the taste of cigarette smoke from the people above us, or even the musty, moldy air that had sent my brother and I into bouts of coughs daily.  
It was because the streets were paved with filth, and not the gold we were promised.  
It was because we were welcomed by discrimination, and not the liberty we were insured.  
It was because my family and I were hungry, our main income coming from the walnuts strewn along the table for us to crack, and because people around us were violent and cruel to us, no matter our nationality or age, and because Alfred and I were still in our clothes from our eleventh birthday and we had grown five inches since then.  
We were living an impovershed life, and we hated it, and we didn't deserve this. There wasn't a moment of silence for me to think through. Where the silence should have been was the sound of the rain hitting the window and reminding us that there was a massive leak in the wall, the sound of the floorboards above creaking, reaserting the fact that the ceiling could cave in at any moment, crushing us all. Despite this surrounding noise, our small dining and entertainment room was silent enough for me to think my answer through.  
I looked up at my maman, warm tears falling down my cheeks, ignoring the fact that my brother was seeing me cry and I probably looked childish.  
"I..." There it was again, the beginning of this sentence that had been crushing me for the past year that we had been here.

"I want to go home." 


End file.
